‘”When you’re out there, tempers flare. Guys get under one another’s skin. Especially with him. We have a long battle against each other and it’s just one of those things. He’s out there and he’s competing hard. You can never take that away from him. He works hard. He just shows emotion a little too much sometime.”‘

‘Animosities between the two Northeast Division rivals are nothing new. In 2001 while playing for the Los Angeles Kings, Mair received a 10-game suspension when he left the bench to aid teammate Mikko Eloranta, who was fighting with Neil.’

‘”I didn’t know he came after me until after (the game), when a couple of the guys told me he had come down there,” said Neil. “I had used him as a punching bag before and that was the only thing I said to him. He didn’t like that too much. We ended up both getting (misconducts). It would have been nice (to be there).”‘

‘”I asked what he wanted, and I told him to beat it. Then he grabbed me and (Phil Legault, the Senators’ vice-president of communications) jumped in, and that was the end of the story. Nothing really happened.”‘

‘“Their record doesn’t really indicate what their team is all about,” Sabres forward Jason Pominville said. “We were on a roll; they were desperate for a win. They needed this. Usually when we play them the intensity rises, and they definitely did that.”’

‘"We had a good run," Sabres defenseman Jaroslav Spacek said. "We came back from the West Coast with three of four points, beat the big teams, and time just hit us a little bit. If we had maybe [an] extra day, everything would be OK. But we just made the little mistakes, and they cost us a big game."’

‘So this thing has two ways of playing out — either the NHL graciously joins forces with Balsillie and makes this the banner kind of moment the league can hang its hat on, or it fouls it up so royally that major American markets thumb their noses even higher at the sport.